


You saved me

by cardandkieran



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Almost death, Angst, F/M, Poisoning, heart broken jude, major character almost die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 09:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18092135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardandkieran/pseuds/cardandkieran
Summary: *** TWK SPOILERS ***Cardan shows up at Vivi's apartment but he has a not-so-pleasant surprise for Jude.





	You saved me

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've seen your comments on my last fic, i know y'all want me to continue "sweet villain" and post another chapter on Cardan's perspective and i'm working on it. I will post it as soon as i can clean my mind and keep writing because i have SO MANY IDEAS!!!! and this was one of them  
> so please be patiente with me, i'll post soon. While i write another chapter of "sweet villain", enjoy this little piece of scene i wrote.  
> hope you like it!!!

“Cardan?”

He's standing at my door, two months after exiling me. A strange smile is on his face, and I hate myself for noticing that he is paler than usual. I should not be noticing how he has changed or how his eyes still hypnotize me, but thinking about thousands of different ways of making him suffer for what he has done to me.

"Jude ..." he whispers, and falls forward.

I'm just too stunned to realize what's going on. I simply hold him, confused, and that's when I feel his white linen shirt wet with something sticky. I am alert immediately.

Blood.

“Cardan? Cardan, what happened? Where are you injured?” I ask desperately as I drag him to the couch.

His gaze is too vague, too dizzy, and when he looks at me, he seems to absorb every bit of me, as if he thought that would be the last time.

"They hit me with an arrow... Poison, I think..."

I lift his shirt as fast as I can, and find the wound just above the rib.

Not good at all.

"Who shot you? And where are your guards?”

He does not answer me, just looks for a while, too focused on me to say anything. I run to the kitchen to look for the bottle of alcohol Vivi leaves in the cupboard as a precaution, and then I realize how my hands are shaking and my heart is racing.

I was not trained for that. I do not know how to deal with injuries or near-death situations; And the truth is, if Cardan was hit with a poisoned arrow, he's dying on the couch in my living room, and I can do nothing.

I find the bottle and run back to the room, and only then I realize that he has his eyes closed.

My heart freezes in my chest.

“Cardan!” I shout, shaking his shoulders so hard that the blood starts spilling from his wound again.

He can barely open his eyes, and I wonder how he got here in the first place. How and why. From so many places he could have went, he decided to appear in the mortal world, to seek my help.

I do not like to think what that means.

“Cardan, talk to me. You cannot sleep, okay? You cannot”

“Jude, dear, I'm so sorry. All I did was....”

I interrupt him by pouring pure alcohol into the wound. He cries out.

"Do not apologize to me now. Live, and then you can explain yourself”

I clean the wound with more alcohol and then rip a piece of his shirt to tie and prevent the bleeding. When I finish I realize that there is nothing left to do but seek help. But for that I need to know who shot him.

“Cardan? Do you know who shot you?”

He nods slightly, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“The Undersea. They found out about our marriage, and they attacked. And without your father's army... I had to run. I was struck by this arrow when I was leaving Elfhame”. 

Okay. Bad. Worse than I expected.

I walk from side to side, wondering what to do. When I look back at Cardan, he has taken the crown off his head, and looks at the gold object as if it were a third arm.

“Jude?” he calls me.

I move closer and he lowers his hands so he can see me better.

"Can you kneel?"

I raise an eyebrow, suspicious.

"Why, Cardan?"

“So I can crown you”.

I take a few steps back, too horrified by what he is suggesting. My anger, my thirst for revenge, my pride... All this disappears. I never really wanted Cardan dead. I never considered that possibility.

I try to tell myself that I'm worried about the succession and the mess that Elfhame must be now, but if that were true I would be accepting his proposal to crown me.

The truth I try to hide from myself is that I feel something for him. I felt it already when I was in Faerie, and after the exile, the feeling did not go away. Thinking about losing him after so much time away makes me lose my temper.

“No, no, no, no”

"I need to. If you want to keep the throne for Oak…” he tries to speak, but I interrupt him.

“I do not want to be crowned like this”

Cardan closes his eyes for a few seconds and I freeze again, too frightened even to speak.

He opens his eyes and whispers the words that I longed to hear, but which came in the worst way:

“Jude, I pardon you. You can go back”.

And when I realize there are already tears rolling down my face. I reach for him again and I take his hands in mine. My hands are shaking and painted with red. His blood.

Cardan's hands are so cold...

“We are going back together” I say with no certainty in my voice “Listen to me Cardan…”

He pushes me away with his last remnant of strength and sits on the couch, vomiting right away. I watch him shiver and squirm as his stomach puts it all out, and I am taken by a memory.

I know that poison. I've taken it before.

I hurry to my room as fast as I can and search through the jars I keep in one of the drawers. After I was exiled, I asked Vivi to look for some of my personal things in my old palace room, including my daily doses of poison and the antidotes I kept.

I find the transparent bottle I was looking for and then return to the room again, only to find Cardan practically plunged into his vomit pool. I run up to him and pick him up, shaking his shoulders in the process.

He does not open his eyes.

This time my despair does not paralyze me. I'm so close to saving him that I put a finger on his wrist and feel the weak pulse.

Fainted, but alive.

I turn his head back and pour the liquid into his mouth.

"Please Cardan, please take it," I whisper almost like a prayer. 

He swallows with difficulty, and I drop to the ground on the opposite side from where he vomited. I lie down on the couch and all I can do now is wait.

In the long hours I'm left alone, I think of how dumb I might be for not accepting the offer of a coronation. If he dies... If Cardan does not survive it, I'll have to crown Oak, and face the consequences.

But something in my heart tells me that I would not have been able to do it. I would never have been able to accept a coronation with Cardan's blood in my hands.

I do not know if I could sleep knowing I would only rule because the High King had died in my lap.

My hands stop shaking as the hours pass, and I check his pulse from time to time, which has increased significantly. I watch him sleep peacefully on my couch, his long lashes tapping lightly on the cheeks. The curves of his face accentuated, making him so handsome that it makes my heart ache.

I want to touch him, more by my despair than anything else. When he was actually dying, one of the thoughts that occurred to me was that Cardan would never touch me again. I spent months feeling that I was disgusted by his touch, that I would never let him come near me again, even if I returned to Elfhame to rule by his side.

And when I thought he could never touch me again... I was desperate.

I miss him, that's the truth.

Along with all my anger and anguish there is also a deep sadness caused by Cardan when he broke the little bit of trust I gave him.

That same sadness that makes me wake up on some nights crying because I feel alone. The same sadness that made me able to save him, even though I knew he was responsible for my worst nightmare.

The sadness I feel because I thought it was okay to love him, and yet I was betrayed.

Cardan opens his eyes slowly, and I get up, sitting on the edge of the couch to look at him better. He blinks a few times, slowly recognizing the place he is.

“Am I dreaming?” he whispers.

I giggle, taking his hands again.

"No, you're not dreaming" he looks at me with more curiosity.

Cardan hold my hands tight and I know he remembers everything. The emotion that fills his eyes is so strong that it makes me look away.

The last time I saw that look on his face was when I accepted his wedding proposal.

When I look at him again, there are tears streaming down his face, and my heart tightens.

I feel the ice in my heart melting for the boy who was never truly loved by either the father or the mother, much less by the brother who raised him. For the boy I never let be the real king. For the boy who still married me, just to let me remain in my position of power.

Cardan.

His name on my mouth is sweet for the first time in weeks.

I whisper his name, over and over again, and hold him carefully, listening to his heart beating lightly on the chest.

I had not realized until that moment that the fear I felt at seeing him bleeding had hardened my muscles. I relax when I smell him, when I hear his heart beat in an uncontrollable rhythm.

He raises his hands slowly to my hair, and inspires my scent.

“You saved me Jude. You saved me”.

**Author's Note:**

> So, don't leave without commenting below. I want to read your thoughts!!!!
> 
> and again, sorry if there's anything wrong bc English is not my first language.


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